In short, the best distribution is one which rewards mainly me, and wealth should be distributed right around the timing of my own entry and my mining and investing habits so that I get the maximum possible piece of the pie, for no particular reason other than that I like myself better than anyone else and would really enjoy being rich, even at the detriment of others.

when you assume that all action is selfish, you shouldn't be surprised that particular results follow 'logically'. but it doesn't mean they're correct.

i recently decided to disclose in another discussion that i mined 12000 early bitcoins and have not sold them. (there are various reasons for that that are not germane here.) indeed, i have never bought or sold a bitcoin in the current block chain. but i would vote #1 here given my view of what's best for the technology and, overall, for society. it is not out of a desire to be richer. so if nothing else, i'm a counterexample to your suggestion that the only motivation for alternative block chains is selfishness.

I don't even know if selfishness as the sole motivator was my point, but kudos to you and I am sure that there are several other counterexamples. I actually don't even know if I had a point, except maybe this: I was imagining that it is very hard to grow a new currency and not have it be disproportionately beneficial to some people. Prior to that thought, I was imagining a bucket of Ezell's fried chicken. This craving struck me and I can't shake it, especially realizing that I haven't had fried chicken in ages but I can remember the flavor and texture perfectly. While typing this right now, I accidentally drooled onto my shirt. I think I have a photographic memory, but only in the specific, taunting area of foods that are terrible for me. Also there is a pregnant woman in my house, and I'm fairly certain that pregnant women have an invisible sphere of influence around them which magically removes all nutritional restrictions of nearby non-pregnant people and makes them eat irrationally.

What does chicken have to do with selfishness in economies? I don't know. I was hoping that you would know. There has to be a connection or a lesson in there somewhere. I think I'm going to just have to go get some fried chicken and find out what happens. Then again, maybe my subconscious had that plan all along and that little bastard was sitting there in my brain, subthinking about how to manipulate me into eating fried chicken. He knew he had to provide me with some plausible excuse for me to voluntarily bring upon the damage that I am about to do to my health. I don't know, man. I just don't know.

I'll tell you this much: if Ezell's fried chicken business only sold chicken in exchange for bags of dog poop, I and several hundred other craving-driven chicken-eaters would comb over lawns and parks to collect that crap. This city would be dog-poop free in a day. I, like a drug addict who just figured out how to make meth in his bathtub, would probably start feeding my dogs tons of food to maximize their poop production. As an early adopter of the poop/fried chicken exchange system, having dogs and a supply of dog food before it skyrocketed in price, I could be rich, my friend. Rich, I say! I'd buy all the dogs at the animal shelter before most of the public knew about the dog poop system, and I would fill my basement and garage with stacks of dog food. Also, I would buy guns and some kind of poop-safe. Also one cat, just but mostly to walk along the top of the fence and annoy the dogs.

Once again, even I don't know where I'm going with this or what I really mean. Oh crap I hate it when that happens. Here's another thing to think about: birds. What would you do if you were one? Do you think they have different languages, or just one generally-accepted kind of birdspeak and then a bunch of different regional accents? If it's the latter, I bet that pigeons, translated into English, would sound like they were from Boston.

Anyway, the secret to Ezell's chicken, believe it or not, is that they slather it in mayonnaise rather than use the typical milk, egg, or buttermilk combo. Disgusting to think about, right? But you can't tell in the end product, because all you notice is that it's somehow crispier and better. That's because the mayonnaise, being denser and more viscous, allows for more batter and, even more importantly, irregularly-arranged batter bits to stick to the chicken. That means more surface area, which means fantastic fried chicken, even if you've just substantially increased the amount of saturated fat.

anyone with any practical or academic experience with economics knows that perfect voluntariness is an untenable abstraction.

Yes, perfect anything is an untenable abstraction.

Imperfect voluntariness is attainable though, just like imperfect freedom of speech.

The problems is that we don't even have imperfect voluntariness in many parts of our current system. It is far more coercive than it practically needs to be, for historical reasons alone. Bitcoin could be a great tool to achieve more voluntariness in society.

The problems is that we don't even have imperfect voluntariness in many parts of our current system. It is far more coercive than it practically needs to be, for historical reasons alone. Bitcoin could be a great tool to achieve more voluntariness in society.

i agree completely. and fixing that is far more important to me than extracting the maximal personal value i can from a pile of bitcoins that i fortuitously happened to mine at the right time. maybe my perspective is different to some others because i already have money, but i've said it before and i'll say it again: the more that bitcoin is a get-rich-quick scheme, the more barriers to adoption it faces.

Then explain this. Further explain why so many people voted him up and agree. It is obvious that it is a barrier to people who would otherwise be interested in Bitcoin. I’m trying to find out how many and if it’s a real problem or not, but that’s not easy.

Bitcoin is the world’s first decentralized currency. 25% of its total supply has been mined without any mortal ever having heard about it. At least 1.8% of the total supply (375k BTC) is known to be in the hands of a single individual, and more of this kind are expected (Satoshi etc.). I fail to see an honest justification for this, fancy voluntaryist talk aside.

I'd rather not refute that entire article in this post, but let's take a quick quote: "The problem is it does this not by offering dollar-denominated digital cash-transfers, but by bootstrapping an entirely new currency. The question to ask is why this would be at all desirable." It's desirable (in part) because this new currency cannot be printed at whim by a central bank. Pretty easy answer, which seems to have eluded the author entirely. The fact that "so many people voted him up" merely proves that many people agree with him. Many people also agree with Ben Bernanke and Kim Kardashian.

Regarding "honest justification" for the wealth of early adopters... I don't know what to say other than: they created something which subsequently became valuable because people like you bought it voluntarily. They didn't lie to you. They didn't cheat. They didn't deceive or defraud you. You bought in to their new invention, and that makes the invention more valuable... and now you're complaining that the inventors shouldn't have been so good at inventing something? Puzzling.

The idea of "distribution" in any free and voluntary market is irrelevant and frankly a silly topic of conversation.

entering this debate against my better judgment, i'm compelled to ask: do you think everyone purchasing bitcoins is fully aware of the distribution of bitcoins and the potential effect of that distribution on their value? if not, is there a reason you don't care about that lack of knowledge, other than having accepted the circular abstraction that if someone makes a purchase they should be deemed to have acted on a full understanding of all the information available, even if it is unrealistic to assume they've accessed and processed that information?

I never claimed anyone had "full understanding of all information available." No person in any market transaction, ever, could claim to have "full awareness" of all variables. Full awareness is not a prerequisite for a just transaction.

So long as someone voluntarily decided to engage in a behavior and nobody intentionally deceived or defrauded that person, then can we please let adults be adults and take responsibility for their actions?

And for goodness' sake, is there not an absurd amount of free, available information here on these forums and the wiki pages?? Anyone who jumped in blindly has no excuse to claim they were "unaware" of important variables. It's open source software! I'm more in the dark when I buy an apple from the grocery store.

So long as someone voluntarily decided to engage in a behavior and nobody intentionally deceived or defrauded that person, then can we please let adults be adults and take responsibility for their actions?

the problem is that 'let adults be adults' isn't actually an argument; it's just a rhetorical device.

if you and i disagree (as many systems of contract law do) on precisely how much information must be disclosed by a seller to a buyer in various contexts, how do you propose to resolve that disagreement? doesn't it have to depend at least in part on a sensitive empirical inquiry? surely 'no disclosure requirements ever' won't be good policy (or else what you call intentional deception would be permitted), nor does 'prevent all transactions because none are ever perfectly voluntary', obviously.

as an analogy, there was lots of publicly available information from which people could have concluded that madoff's investment company was a scam. (i actually had the opportunity to invest, indirectly, with madoff and declined after looking into it.) does that mean that, for you, it wasn't problematic?

the reason this matters here is that, though nothing about the current block chain necessarily makes it a scam, what i perceive to be my own sensitive empirical judgement forces me to conclude that it in fact is a pyramid scheme in practice. that's one reason i haven't sold any of my bitcoins: i think there are ethical problems in doing so - the same sort of ethical problems that you associate with fraud and intentional deception. for the same reason, i have been advocating for alternative block chains for about a month, before the other calls for them came (and not just for reasons related to the distribution of coins in that chain).

So long as someone voluntarily decided to engage in a behavior and nobody intentionally deceived or defrauded that person, then can we please let adults be adults and take responsibility for their actions?

the reason this matters here is that, though nothing about the current block chain necessarily makes it a scam, what i perceive to be my own sensitive empirical judgement forces me to conclude that it in fact is a pyramid scheme in practice. that's one reason i haven't sold any of my bitcoins: i think there are ethical problems in doing so

A "pyramid scheme" requires a promise of payment or guarantee of some kind. It's fraud because the guarantee is impossible to sustain and the guaranteer knows this. The guarantee must be something like "you give me X, and in the future you will receive Y" where both X and Y are specified and promised.

There is nothing in Bitcoin to suggest such a fraud. Nobody that I'm aware of has been guaranteed anything, at any point in time. On the contrary, these very forums are evidence of skepticism, critique, and constant debate. Rather than a ponzi scheme, Bitcoin is more accurately described as a commodity market - albeit a very volatile, dangerous, exciting, and perhaps revolutionary one.

If you don't want to sell your coins because you think Bitcoin is a ponzi scam to enrich the early adopters, there's an easy solution for you: sell your coins for $0.01 each or better yet donate them all to the Bitcoin Faucet.

And if you're truly worried about ponzi schemes, study the US Social Security system and alert the hundreds of millions of people who will be criminally ripped off when it comes crashing down as the promises to pay specified benefits are mathematically impossible to sustain. Madoff was nothing compared to the US Gov, and it's inaccurate to put Bitcoin in that hideous category.

A "pyramid scheme" requires a promise of payment or guarantee of some kind. It's fraud because the guarantee is impossible to sustain and the guaranteer knows this. The guarantee must be something like "you give me X, and in the future you will receive Y" where both X and Y are specified and promised.

it's just semantic or terminological, but that's just not correct. i've never seen 'pyramid scheme' tied to 'intent' except in this forum. for example, the american ftc disagrees, as do most people who use that term elsewhere. almost never is the future return 'specified and promised' in a pyramid scheme. such schemes typically exist on hope.

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And if you're truly worried about ponzi schemes, study the US Social Security system and alert the hundreds of millions of people who will be criminally ripped off when it comes crashing down as the promises to pay specified benefits are mathematically impossible to sustain. Madoff was nothing compared to the US Gov, and it's inaccurate to put Bitcoin in that hideous category.

the american social security system isn't a ponzi scheme; it just depends on increasing population and suffers moderate financial difficulty (e.g., the ability to pay only about 85% of established claims - which is not nearly as bad as the press would have you think) during temporary periods of relative decreases in the 'population' of the adult workforce. if population keeps rising or even stays the same, there's not even a hint of a ponzi scheme in the system.

if population keeps rising or even stays the same, there's not even a hint of a ponzi scheme in the system.

Current recipients of SS money are paid by new entrants into the system, contrary to the popular belief that when you pay SS taxes, they're going into a savings account for you.

The system will require more and more entrants (increasing population), because A) medical costs are rising and will continue to do so (mainly due to US policies) and B) people live longer and longer yet the payout age of 65 remains the same.

Without an increasing population, the system must renege on benefits that were promised. Thus it requires an increasing number of entrants to prevent promises from being broken. This is about as ponzi as something can get.

A "pyramid scheme" requires a promise of payment or guarantee of some kind. It's fraud because the guarantee is impossible to sustain and the guaranteer knows this. The guarantee must be something like "you give me X, and in the future you will receive Y" where both X and Y are specified and promised.

Pyramid schemes never work like that. They are always some variation of, "you give me X, and when you get N more people to join up, you will receive Y". The promise is never broken, it's just that invariably, the losers fail to get N number of people and are accordingly blamed for having failed to meet their end of the bargain. Perhaps they were unmotivated or lazy, they are told.

Companies claiming they got hacked and lost your coins sounds like fraud so perfect it could be called fashionable. I never believe them. If I ever experience the misfortune of a real intrusion, I declare I have been honest about the way I have managed the keys in Casascius Coins. I maintain no ability to recover or reproduce the keys, not even under limitless duress or total intrusion. Remember that trusting strangers with your coins without any recourse is, as a matter of principle, not a best practice. Don't keep coins online. Use paper or hardware wallets instead.

Long story short: Bitcoin finally got some power after a little over a year, bunch of jealous newcomers start crying about not having enough BTCsimple solution: less QQ more pewpew. Start your own chain.

On the asymptotic "minting": It is modeled after the idea that transaction volume is proportional to network size and the expectation of exponential adoption. The logarithmic coinbase reward promotes strong security early one, which will allow the network to bootstrap into exponential growth, increasing transactions that will eventually take over coinbased reward.

tl,dr: it allows early strong security on a model that is based on network size.

At least 1.8% of the total supply (375k BTC) is known to be in the hands of a single individual, and more of this kind are expected (Satoshi etc.). I fail to see an honest justification for this, fancy voluntaryist talk aside.

It's not a socialist system. If you think capitalism is honest, then this is honest.